Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) devices are becoming prevalent on many mobile and desktop computers. SATA is a high-speed data link used for communication between input/output (I/O) devices and the host controller(s) that are connected to or embedded within a chipset. There are many benefits to SATA including having a dedicated link per device to increase data throughput, native command queuing (NCQ) that increases performance of SATA hard disks by allowing the individual hard disk to receive more than one I/O request at a time and decide which to complete first, and hot-plugging, which allows removing and replacing components within a computer system, while the system is operating.
The hot-plugging benefit, also called hot-swapping, is very useful for many mobile computer users because the mobile computer's limited size rarely allows it enough drive bays to concurrently run an extra hard disk drive, a CD-ROM drive, a DVD drive, or any other number of hardware peripherals. Thus, hot-plugging between two or more of these devices is very beneficial to a mobile computer user to allow work to continue without requiring a reboot.
Additionally, as computers become more powerful and more portable, the need for power savings increases to allow longer battery life, decrease total system weight, and decrease the necessary expensive thermal solution requirements among other benefits. Although SATA devices do allow hot-swapping, the current SATA Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) definition requires that hot-swap capabilities and SATA power management be mutually exclusive.